Think you’re a
HOW A NEW DNA TEST COULD WELL YIELD SURPRISING RESULTS
THERE’S a good chance most of the folk reading this will have been born and bred and the North East.
They might even consider themselves ‘Geordies’.
But think again. A simple test will almost certainly reveal your genetic origins are spread far and wide around the UK, Europe and even further afield.
The genealogy organisation Ancestry.co.uk already provides access and support for those researching their family histories.
More people than ever are today uncovering their origins via census results and birth, marriage and death certificates.
If you’re lucky, you might be able trace your ancestors back to the early decades of the 19th century.
Now a product called AncestryDNA allows you to trace your personal genetic history back hundreds and even thousands of years.
Take yours truly. Born on Tyneside. Parents born on Tyneside. Grandparents born on Tyneside.
But then it gets less straightforward. Apparently I’m only a third generation ‘Geordie’.
Like many, many of us, it seems my great grandparents headed to booming industrial Tyneside for work in the later decades of the 19th century.
They hailed from all over the place - Ireland, Nottingham, Stoke on Trent, Liverpool, Cumbria - and even Sunderland!
That’s already quite a mix. And further back, who knows?
That’s where Ancestry DNA comes in. I took the simple test with surprising results. What is the AncestryDNA test?
It reveals your genetic ancestry from thousands of years ago from 26 global regions, all from a simple saliva sample. What else does it offer?
As well as a detailed ethnicity estimate, AncestryDNA also offers Genetic Communities, a new feature that connects you across the world, giving insight into the